The annual public report from the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program’s Independent Program Administrator has been released by Major League Baseball. The stats:

There were 5,391 total drug tests. 4,022 were urine samples, 1,369 were blood samples;

There were eight positive tests resulting in discipline. All were for stimulants. Seven of the stimulant tests were for Adderall. One for Methylhexaneamine. I guess that means that there are no more steroids in baseball. Yay!

There were 122 therapeutic use exemptions for otherwise banned drugs. 119 of them were for ADD drugs like Adderall. Three were three for hypogonadism. A couple of years ago here was only one for hypogonadism, so that’s on the uptick. On the bright side, two years ago there was a therapeutic use exemption for narcolepsy and now there is none. So the narcoleptic either got better or retired.

The most interesting thing here, to me anyway, continues to be the number of Adderall-users in baseball. It’s estimated that 4.7% of the adult population has ADD. 119 of roughly 1,200 major leaguers on 40-man rosters puts the ADD rate at nearly 10%. Back that number down a little bit for the various guys that shuffle in and out of 400-man rosters and you figure that baseball players have ADD diagnosis at around twice the level of that in the normal population.

Are baseball players more likely to have ADD than the rest of the adult population? Are they just more likely to be diagnosed that way? Or are therapeutic use exemptions for ADD drugs a means of getting something ballplayers have always found beneficial — stimulants — in a legal way?

The Cardinals have always emphasized building from within. In the 2016-17 offseason, however, they may end up being one of the bigger free agent buyers. At least according to some informed speculation.

The Cardinals are already losing their first round pick due to the Fowler signing, so any other top free agent won’t cost them more than the money he’s owed. And as far as money goes, the Cardinals have a great deal of it, despite being a small market team. They have a billion dollar TV deal coming online and Matt Holliday and Jaime Garcia are off the payroll now. Spending big on a free agent or three would not cripple them or anything.

Encarnacion or Trumbo would be first baseman, which wold fly in the face of the Cards’ move of Matt Carpenter to first base (and, at least as far as Encarnacion goes, would fly in the face of good defense). Getting either of them would push Carpenter back to second, displacing Kolten Wong, or over to third, displacing Jhonny Peralta. If you’re going to do that, I’d say that Turner would make more sense, but what do I know?

Either way, the Cardinals may be entering a pretty interesting phase of their offseason now. And an unfamiliar one as, quite possibly, the top free agent buyer on the market.

There is literally nothing you could tell me that the incoming administration is considering which would shock me anymore. As such, I saw this story when I woke up this morning, blinked once, took a sip of coffee, closed the browser window and just went on with my morning, as desensitized as a wisdom tooth about to be yanked.

Rob Bradford of WEEI.com reports that Former Red Sox, Mets and Rangers manager Bobby Valentine is on a short-list of candidates for the job of United States Ambassador to Japan:

The 66-year-old, who currently serves as Sacred Heart University’s athletics director, has engaged in preliminary discussions with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team regarding the position.

Valentine managed the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan’s Pacific League for six seasons, leading the team to a championship in 2005. He also knows the current prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, as both went to USC. Assuming championship teams meet the country’s leader in Japan like they do in the United States, Valentine has at least twice the amount of experience with top political leaders than does, say, Ned Yost, so that’s something.

The former manager, more importantly, is friends with Donald Trump’s brother, with the two of them going way back. Which, given how this transition is going, seems like a far more important set of qualifications than anything else on this list.